Friday, September 23, 2011

I'm starting to like doing this post each week. It seems to give me the extra kick in the butt to actually do some cooking. Nothing too fancy this week but I did take some pretty pictures of the food to make up for my very basic meals.

Monday: Vegetable Soup (VG, V if you dump cheese in it)
Vegetable soup is a no-brainer. As in, you don't need a recipe to make it. It is pretty much impossible to mess up, unless you totally overcook the veggies and everything turns to mush (hint: don't do this). I made mine in a crock pot since I was feeling pretty lazy. One gripe about vegetable soup though, I was trying to think of something I could add which would take vegetable soup from ordinary to extraordinary. I couldn't think of anything so suggestions are welcome. But I did accidentally dump too much grated parmesan into my bowl of soup and since the cheese was already soaking in the broth I couldn't scoop out the extra cheese. And let me tell you, too much cheese in vegetable soup did not suck, not one bit.

Wednesday:Pumpkin coconut bread (VG)
Nothing like cool fall mornings to get me craving something pumpkin. And this pumpkin bread is awesome! Doesn't taste vegan at all and best part of all, the recipe makes two loaves! I usually immediately freeze one of the loaves and it freezes beautifully.

Thursday: Roasted pepper, mushroom, and caramelized onion pizza (V)
There are two things I strongly believe in:
1. There is no wrong mix of vegetables that you can put on a pizza
2. Caramelized onions should be included in every recipe. Every.single.one.
Since finding pre-made pizza dough at Whole Foods we've been making a lot of pizza at home. Plus we haven't found a pizza place in Fort Collins that we are totally crazy about yet. The general formula for our pizza nights involves one pizza that is half cheese/ half meat for the kids and Chris and one veggie pizza that always contains caramelized onions (every.single.time). This time the meat/cheese pizza was ham and pineapple and the veggie pizza had roasted red peppers, sauteed mushrooms, and caramelized onions on it. And because I also think that adding a little green to your pizza makes it pretty (and reminds me of a great pizza I ate in Paris), I threw some arugula on top of the veggie pizza after it came out of the oven.

How pretty is that?

Half cheese/half ham and pineapple

And just in case you don't want to put caramelized onions on your pizza here are a few other recipes that use caramelized onions are are also very delicious:Caramelized fig spread (VG)Mujadara (V)

Friday:Beer soaked fries (VG)
It's Friday so really no excuse needed to infuse beer into our food but Friday was a very LONG day for me. The kids had a field trip to a local farm and I was happy to come along as a chaperone. We spent the morning picking cabbage, corn, onions, potatoes, green beans, and pumpkins. I was seriously wiped out after the trip! And Conner and Elizabeth worked hard to dig up some potatoes which I decided needed to be turned into fries.

Digging up taters

I used Tommyknocker Pumpkin Harvest Ale to soak the fries (I chose this beer because neither Chris nor I are too crazy about drinking it so I wanted to use it up on something). And you can't beat having some potatoes picked by your sweet little pumpkins for dinner!

Sweet pumpkins

Verdict: Skip soaking the potatoes in beer and just drink it instead. I really couldn't taste the beer in the fries (so I think they are safe for kid consumption) and they took a long time to bake (1 hr +)!

Enjoy your weekend! And if you decide to infuse some of your food with beer, please share how it goes (unless you're doing the beer can chicken). We are going to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park for one last time before the road to the highest mountain closes up for winter. Though winter seems far away given how warm it is today and is supposed to be this weekend!

Friday, September 16, 2011

Look at that, I've made it to the second week of my new series. Are y'all as surprised as I am? Unfortunately (or fortunately as I see it), I cooked very little this week. Leftovers were abundant in the fridge and one night I decided to skip dinner, cause ya know I've got a Hawaiian vacation coming up! But here is a rundown on what I made and ate this week:

Saturday:Peanut butter chocolate chip cookie balls (VG)
Saturday afternoon Elizabeth once again decided that napping is so 2010, so we decided to make some cookies together while the others napped and Daddy watched football. We made these peanut butter chocolate chip cookie balls and OMG, these are so incredibly good!!!

Sunday: Tempeh spagetti
On Sunday night we went over to our neighbor's house for dinner. And the dinner being served was spaghetti with spicy sausage (Chris was so excited for this!). My neighbor was so sweet and called me to ask what she could make for me to eat (yippee!). I gave her a tip that tempeh crumbled into marinara sauce would be really easy and give me the extra protein that Boris insists I eat. Easy peasey and pretty darn good. Simply take your tempeh, steam it for about 10 minutes, and then crumble it into marinara sauce. My favorite brand of tempeh is Westsoy as this brand crumbles really easily into small pieces. Since I was the only one eating the tempeh spaghetti I got leftovers sent home with me (double yippee!). And my neighbor last week made the most delicious mac-n-cheese ever (at my suggestion) but her kids didn't agree with my review of the mac-n-cheese. So a big ol' dish of mac-n-cheese got sent home with us too (triple yippee!).

Monday, Tuesday: Leftover tempeh spaghetti. And I still have enough left over for one more meal.

Wednesday: The Kate Moss special

Thursday: Faux sausage and peppers
I figured it was about time for me to cook a meal for the family. Even though we had been eating a lot of marinara and noodles, I decided to make faux sausage and peppers. You really don't need a recipe for this one as its a no-brainer. Take some bell peppers, an onion, and faux Italian sausages (I used the Tofurky brand) and sautee them. At the same time boil a box of pasta. When the pepper and sausage mix is done throw a bottle of marinara sauce in with it (I did make marinara from scratch for this). Put sausage mix together with pasta in a big pan. Throw some mozzarella cheese on top and put in the oven at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes. Bam! You'll have leftovers for days too!

So as you can see, a light week of cooking meals for the family. But I did make some other things this week, some of which I ate and some of which I didn't.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Half a year already?! Why does the first year go by so fast with babies? Just like puppies, can't we keep them little for a while longer. But on the bright side, I've loved having these sweet baby cheeks to kiss multiple times a day, every day, for the past 6 months.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

I'm thinking of starting a little series on the blog called "What I Made and Ate This Week". In reality this series probably can be filed under "more things that nobody really cares to read about" but I'm gonna go ahead and yammer on. Plus I'll probably only keep the series up for a few weeks and then I'll lose steam and interest but maybe, just maybe I can build a little book of recipes and reviews to look back on when I'm at a loss for what to make. Oh, and I'll try and note whether a recipe is vegetarian (V) or vegan (VG). So here we go, Week 1:

Week 1: What I Made and Ate This Week:

Monday: Tempeh snobby joes topped with coleslaw (V, VG if you use Veganaise in the coleslaw)
Since going vegetarian I've really missed sloppy joes. But who wants to open up a can of that stuff which rhymes with nanwich and pour it over a meat substitute. Crumbled tempeh works great in this recipe and the sauce is easy to make. I cheated and bought a small container of shredded cabbage at Whole Foods because I didn't really want a big ol' thing of coleslaw lingering in the fridge after the tempeh snobby joes were gone. As other reviewers mentioned, the sauce made according to the directions is a little bland so I ended up adding some barbeque sauce and liquid smoke to give it some flavor. Overall these were as good as I remembered from growing up.

Wednesday:Corn and roasted green chile soup (V)
In the past I've had a discussion with a friend about whether New Jersey or Nebraska sweet corn would win in a head-to-head duel. And while we never got around to matching up the fruits of these states, I will always stand by Nebraska sweet corn. And lucky for me, I've got a freezer FULL of Nebraska sweet corn. Seriously, I've got like 30 bags of the stuff. So there will probably be a lot of recipes with corn in them for the next few months. This recipe had a lot of steps that I had shortcuts in place for, such as I bought some fresh roasted green chiles at the farmer's market so I didn't have to roast my own at home. And I used ground spices rather than roasting and grinding the seeds. And, I added sweet potatoes because they are delicious and add a little more veggie nutrition to the soup. Of course I omitted any and all cilantro too, even though the recipe was trying to be tricky and fool me by calling it coriander sprigs. This soup turned out great but really, can you ever mess a soup up? Especially when heavy cream is involved.

Thursday:Chocolate cherry cashew energy bars (VG)
My trainer, who is Russian and I will call Boris, keeps telling me that I don't eat enough protein. I told him that I really like protein bars and his response was that protein bars are expensive, why not just eat raw eggs. I bit my tongue from telling him that meat is probably more expensive than any of those protein bars that I like. And while my protein intake is just fine, I think Boris is trying to get me to eat enough protein to turn me into a Russian fighting machine. As long as I'm a Russian fighting machine who can wear a bikini in Hawaii in November then I'll get on board any training (i.e., torture) program that Boris has for me.

The link for these bars is for a post on a formula for making energy bars at home. So instead of listing exact ingredients it will just tell you the general ratio you need of each type of ingredients (and don't worry it gives you examples of what ingredients to use). I used the suggestions for a chocolate black bean happy bar and made a few substitutions such as protein powder instead of brown rice flour (just for you Boris) and cherries and cashews instead of coconut and raisins. These bars turned out good and I think these are even deceptive enough for kids to enjoy without knowing that there are beans in them.

So that's it for Week 1 of What I Made and Ate This Week. Yep, I realize that it's only Thursday but we have corn soup for days and once the weekend hits I'm lazy and we usually just go out to eat. But if I make anything else then I'll probably cheat and just add it to next week's list.

Have a great weekend. The weather is AMAZING here and is supposed to be this way all weekend. I think we will be spending lots and lots of time outside! Come on over if you're in the neighborhood :).

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

A boy married a girl in beautiful gardens, under a very hot sun! Dancing, drinking, and laughs were shared among family and friends to celebrate this new marriage.

Little did this boy and girl know that after only 5 years of marriage they would be so blessed to have three children join them in celebrating this anniversary.

Life together has been very good for this boy and girl. Good health, good jobs, a great place to live, and a chance every once in a while to spend some time just the two of them, pedaling together into the sunset.

I can not believe that summer is officially over. And the weather here seems to know that summer is over as cool days and chilly nights are starting to loom. Looking back on the summer, a whole lot happened! While I won't bore you with all the details, I thought I'd put together a list of some of the highlights. So here you have the top 10 adventures of the summer, in chronological order.10. We said good-bye to all of our wonderful friends at Montessori school.

9. We packed our entire house and 10 years of memories into a van destined for our new home in Colorado.

8. We spent a week in Nebraska riding tractors, elephants, visiting old friends with their new little ones, and roasting marshmallows!

7. New adventures in our new backyard and new parks.

6. A trip to the Denver Museum of Science and close up encounters with the extinct kind.

5. A weekend in the mountains, full of beautiful scenery and wildlife sightings.

4. We said hello to new friends at preschool.

3. We started watching Dance Moms so that I can be fully prepared for Elizabeth's newest activity.

2. Another trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, and the discovery that Conner gets motion sick very easily :(.